ARTICLES ABOUT TREASURE HUNT BY DATE - PAGE 2

In the midst of a school year, it's hard to help kids find time for fitness. Come to think of it, it's hard for grown-ups to find the time too. Dr. Adam Shafran and Lee Kantor offer a bounty of suggestions in "35 Things to Know to Raise Active Kids" (Turner Publishing, $9.99). Fostering a positive attitude toward physical activity while kids are young, the authors contend, will be a gift they will use throughout their adult lives. A few suggestions from the authors: Active rituals: Developing regularly scheduled activities elevates fitness into an opportunity for family bonding.

Even for a library, the Newberry Library on the city's Near North Side has been getting an awful lot of books delivered to its freight dock in the last couple of weeks — more than 120,000. And as it opens its 26th annual book fair Thursday, it expects more than 100,000 to leave again by Sunday. The fair is the most important fundraising event of the year at the Newberry, one of the nation's premier independent research libraries. For knowledgeable book lovers, the fair is a fantasy opportunity to paw through seven rooms full of tables piled with books on almost every conceivable subject, most priced around a couple of bucks.

One of the tricks I use to get myself to save money is to collect spare change. When my 5-gallon water jug gets reasonably full, I count the coins and deposit them in the bank. When I first tried this little savings experiment a few years ago, I ended up with more than $800. This time, my haul was a little less but still respectable: $510. The plan was to deposit $450 into my Bank of America savings account and keep the rest as a reward. Then I hit a snag. When I arrived at the bank, I was informed that Bank of America no longer counts coins on site.

Downers Grove The Downers Grove Friends of the Library is accepting donations of gently used books for its travel book and cookbook sale Oct. 23 and 24 in the library, 1050 Curtiss St. The donations may be made up to the week of the sale. Proceeds will be used to fund projects supported by the Friends of the Library. Call Joni Hansen at 630-969-5477. Hinsdale The Assistance League of Chicagoland West will hold an informational coffee at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 22 in 119 E. Ogden Ave., Suite 130. The group assembles kitchen essentials for families transitioning from homelessness to independent living, and provides coats for elementary students and backpacks with literacy materials for low-income children and Head Start sites.

You won't find a perfectly ripe tomato at Martin Palumbo's grocery store. You won't even find a perfect can of tomatoes. What you will find are lots of dented cans of tomatoes and a growing number of customers hungry for these and other staples sold at deep discounts, such as cereal boxes crushed by forklifts and bottles of salad dressing past their "sell-by" dates. Sales at Palumbo's Friday Store in suburban Denver have surged in recent months, mirroring the trend at so-called salvage grocers nationwide, as the recession makes frugal living appealing to more Americans.

Chris Johnson squints at the jeans-clad plastic buttocks of mannequins lined up in L.A.'s downtown fashion district storefronts. He's looking for something special: an upside-down horseshoe on the jeans' back pocket. Eventually he finds jeans complete with the trademarked True Religion horseshoes on the pocket and True Religion tags, picturing a Buddha stroking a guitar. Johnson buys one pair -- which usually retail for between $170 and $400 -- for $60. "I can tell just by looking that they're fake," he says.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets (PG) 2 stars A random creep (Ed Harris) claims that Ben Gates' (Nicolas Cage) great-great-grandfather organized the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, an accusation Gates deals with the only way he knows how: treasure hunt. With the help of his on-the-outs significant other (Diane Kruger) and sarcastic sidekick (Justin Bartha), Gates searches for the presidents' alleged "book of secrets" and the mythical "City of Gold," to clear his ancestor's name.

Nicolas Cage reprises his role as Ben Gates in "National Treasure: Book of Secrets." This time around, Gates' attempts to clear his great-great grandfather as a conspirator with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln leads him on yet another treasure hunt. Terry recently chatted with Cage about the film. Let's see -- you break into Buckingham Palace, you sneak into the Oval Office and you kidnap the president of the United States. Another typical day for Ben Gates.